Poem
Jen Hadfield
NO SNOW FELL ON EDEN
NO SNOW FELL ON EDEN
NO SNOW FELL ON EDEN
NO SNOW FELL ON EDENas i remember it – there was no snow,
so no thaw or tao as you say
no snowmelt drooled down the brae;
no human footfall swelled into that of a yeti
baring what it shoulda kept hidden;
no yellow ice choked bogbean;
there were no sheepskulls
in the midden –
it was no allotment, eden –
they had a hothouse,
an orangery, a mumbling monkey;
there was no cabbage-patch
of rich, roseate heads;
there was no innuendo
no sea, no snow
There was nothing funny
about a steaming bing of new manure.
There was nothing funny at all.
Black was not so sooty. No fishboat revolved redly
on an eyepopping sea.
Eve never sat up late drinking and crying.
Adam knew no-one who was dying.
That was yet to come, In The Beginning.
© 2006, Jen Hadfield
Jen Hadfield
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1978)
Nothing is permanent in the poetry of Jen Hadfield (‘I don’t know what it is / about this place that things / metaflower so readily / into their present selves’). With a meticulous, sober gaze, she watches how everything around her sprouts and grows, buds and creeps into everything else. Her poems might be about the rugged nature in northern Shetland where she lives (‘the scrambling twig / hern...
Poems
Poems of Jen Hadfield
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NO SNOW FELL ON EDEN
NO SNOW FELL ON EDENas i remember it – there was no snow,
so no thaw or tao as you say
no snowmelt drooled down the brae;
no human footfall swelled into that of a yeti
baring what it shoulda kept hidden;
no yellow ice choked bogbean;
there were no sheepskulls
in the midden –
it was no allotment, eden –
they had a hothouse,
an orangery, a mumbling monkey;
there was no cabbage-patch
of rich, roseate heads;
there was no innuendo
no sea, no snow
There was nothing funny
about a steaming bing of new manure.
There was nothing funny at all.
Black was not so sooty. No fishboat revolved redly
on an eyepopping sea.
Eve never sat up late drinking and crying.
Adam knew no-one who was dying.
That was yet to come, In The Beginning.
NO SNOW FELL ON EDEN
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